erf planning.indd - Hampshire County Council

More documents

Recommendations

Info

HistoryThe “Portsmouth Burner”Historically, Hampshire has not had large voids available for landfi ll, and during the1960s and 1970s built a number of small municipal incinerators. In the late 1980s it wasfound that landfi ll capacity was rapidly declining and there was a need to replace theincinerators which were becoming obsolete. In response to this situation the CountyCouncil adopted a waste management strategy which promoted additional recycling– then running at about 8% – but also placed emphasis on replacing the incineratorswith state of the art energy recovery facilities.Investigations at the time demonstrated the case for economies of scale and a proposalwas developed for one 350,000 tpa facility to serve the whole of South Hampshire. It isimportant to note that, at this time, waste management was not a high profi le activity andthe political priority was to deliver a replacement system at a minimum additional cost. Inthe absence of a Waste Local Plan for identifying appropriate development sites for sucha plant, the County Council asked for tenders from three companies to redevelop a massburn energy recovery incinerator on the site of the then recently closed small incinerator inPortsmouth. Tenders were to be on a design, fi nance, build and operate basis.The company which won the tender (not Veolia) submitted a planning application fora 350,000 tpa plant at the end of 1991. However, the press, public and local politicsreacted negatively and a campaign to oppose the development was formed. The mainarguments behind the opposition were that:• the plant would be too big and the choice was more to do with fi nancial issues thanenvironmental ones• it would make Portsmouth the rubbish dump for Hampshire• other sites had not been fully considered• it was not needed – the waste should be recycled and the incinerator would prejudicefuture recycling (there were no solid plans for increasing recycling at the time)• there were overwhelming traffi c issues• the plant had no particular architectural merit• there was concern about pollution and health• there were better ways of managing waste.Obtaining planning permission for energy recovery facilities
Although some public engagement processes were undertaken, these were almostentirely counter-productive and the local newspaper ran a very effective “Ban theBurner” campaign based on the above points. The situation was not helped by thecontractor’s apparent lack of understanding of the community concerns and inability torespond in an appropriate way – for example an artist’s impression of the height of thenew plant was found to be misleading.The pressure on the County Council was so intense that following submission of theplanning application for the plant, and despite the applicant being the Council’s owncontractor, it was obliged to refuse the application and recommend that a strategy bedeveloped based on increased recycling and smaller, well designed energy recoveryfacilities. Although in hindsight this has worked to Hampshire’s advantage, at the timeit left the County Council’s entire waste strategy in collapse. Landfi ll was running outand the four ageing incinerators were facing the upcoming (1996) change in emissionsregulations which were inevitably going to close them down.Community engagementFollowing the failure of the “Portsmouth Burner”, a survey of key opinion formers andobjectors was carried out. The fact that the County Council had decided to undertakepublic consultation after a fi rm proposal had been adopted was found to have beena major source of frustration. The survey also found there was much communitywillingness to help fi nd a solution – provided that Hampshire County Council did notenter into consultations having already made a decision.The County Council recognised that if it was going to address the looming waste disposalcrisis it had to rethink its whole approach to the subject, and moreover, it had to have somepublic acceptance and political endorsement of this approach in both strategic and landuse planning terms.The approach was reformed accordingly, based on three parallel but related processes.• Engage the public in a “bottom-up” process about the issues it faced and thealternative approaches to solving them.• Develop an integrated approach whereby waste treatment was founded on the wastemanagement hierarchy, i.e. recycling and composting fi rst and foremost, leaving theresidual waste stream to be treated in a manner yet to be decided. It became clearthat if this was to work, the County Council would have to work in partnership with thedistrict councils as waste collection authorities.
Page 2 and 3: IntroductionOver the past ten years
Page 6 and 7: • Ensure the Hampshire, Portsmout
Page 8 and 9: Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampt
Page 10 and 11: Chineham ERFThe fi rst planning app
Page 12 and 13: Marchwood ERFThe Marchwood applicat
Page 14 and 15: The way forwardThe commissioning of
Page 16 and 17: PartnershipAnother important featur
Page 18 and 19: DetailIn preparing the planning app
Page 20: EnergyRecoveryFacilitiesPrinted on

erf planning.indd - Hampshire County Council

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?